©Alicia Dara
A close friend I’ve known for years has an amazing mother I’ll call Donna*, a petite redhead with perfect posture and a no-nonsense handshake. Donna was born and raised in Adelaide, Australia to a family of public servants and government workers. She studied political science in college and got a government job right after graduation in the 1980s, working for a local politician in a busy campus of government buildings.
Donna described him as “a huge windbag” who loved to hear himself talk, especially when interrupting the dedicated women who worked on his staff. As a politician he was moderately effective, but he had one special quality: everyone hated him! It wasn’t just the political opposition. His own party tried to avoid interacting with him whenever possible. During legislative session meetings, when all parties gathered to debate laws and pass the ones they could, he was exiled to the back row, and often wasn’t allowed to speak except to cast his vote for whatever issue was on the table. Needless to say this treatment made him furious, and he would often return from meetings red-faced and puffing with rage. He would stalk to his office and slam the door so hard that paintings would fall off the wall.
Donna was his Assistant Chief of Staff. She was charged with managing the women in the office (a job which he described as “wrangling the cats”), and making sure that they were performing their duties. She saw her job as shielding the women from their boss’ rage and unreasonable demands whenever possible. She told me she learned how to let him cool off before approaching him, or else she’d just ignore him completely. Mostly she stayed calm and quiet, and she didn’t rock the boat unless absolutely necessary. She didn’t know how to change the situation, and she dreaded adding more conflict to an already conflict-ridden workplace.
One scorching afternoon, after returning from another demeaning legislative session, the politician suddenly decided that he wanted some files moved from his office to another building on the other side of the campus, where he had a big meeting that night. The heavy boxes of files would have to be carried by hand for about half a mile, and he wanted Donna and four other women to do the job.
Of course you already know that Australia is a place of intense heat and scorching sun. The town of Adelaide, where this story takes place, is actually the hottest city of all. Even when the sky is overcast you need multiple layers of protection to keep you safe. When Donna was growing up all school children were taught to “slip/slop/slap”, which meant, “slip on a shirt, slop on some sunscreen, slap on a hat”. The heat is so ferociously strong that citizens are warned to stay out of the sun whenever possible, or risk dropping dead from heat exhaustion.
When Donna heard that her boss wanted the women to carry his files out into the heat just to satisfy his whim, something broke free inside her. What happened next is burned in her memory, because it was the first time she had ever confronted her boss directly. She launched herself up from her desk, pushed through the door of his office, and sat down in the chair across from him. She told him that his demand was unreasonable given the huge risk of danger the women would have to undertake. She said she would not allow them to do it, but that she would work with him to come up with an alternate solution.
Her boss huffed and puffed until sweat ran down his face. He waved his arms around, yelling that she was just like all the others who were constantly trying to stifle him. He got louder and louder until Donna had enough. She stood up and told him calmly his behavior was unacceptable, and she would talk to him later when he was no longer angry. He was so shocked at her response that he sat back down and apologized! He wiped his brow with his tie and asked her to please help him find another way to get the files moved. Donna called the building’s janitorial team. They liked her a lot, because she would often bring them cold sodas as a thank-you whenever they had to stay late and clean up after her super-messy boss. The janitors had an air-conditioned truck, and Donna asked them to bring it to the front door of the building. The team and her boss loaded the files into the truck, and drove them across campus. It was that simple!
Donna said that after that day she was no longer afraid to push back on her boss. Whenever he became unreasonable she would look him in the eye and simply say, “Do I have to call the janitors again?” which usually shut him right up. Although that was her last year working for him, she never forgot the lessons she learned that day: stay calm, strategic, and solution-focused, and never let anyone abuse you. Oh yeah, I almost forgot her other piece of wisdom: “Always make friends with the janitors!”
Are you ready to learn some conflict resolution skills of your own? Hurry, there are only 8 tickets left for my next Zoom training, “Conflict Resolution Skills for Career Women” . Join me by Zoom on May 4th for this 90-minute event. Only 10 tickets are left, get your TICKETS HERE.
*name and some details changed for privacy